Integrate Cloud Music Players Into Your Desktop With Nuvola Player [Linux]

March 3, 2012 | In: Uncategorized

Integrate your favorite cloud-based music players with the Linux desktop. Whether you’re a fan of Google Music, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, 8tracks or all four, Nuvola Player makes listening to cloud music in Linux so seamless you’ll forget they’re not desktop players. It lets you elegantly control all four of these online music services from your Unity or Gnome desktop. You’ll forget you’re even using a web-based service.

Cloud music programs are great in many ways, but they also suck sometimes. For example, you might close your browser window, forgetting it’s playing your music. Your browser might crash, bringing down your music with the rest of your tabs. Beyond this, browser-based players just aren’t elegant. You typically can’t use keyboard shortcuts to control them, and you need to open your browser to skip a track or to pause your music.

Using Nuvola Player

Fire up Nuvola Player and you’ll be presented with four choices:

Pick which online music service you want to use and you’ll be taken to that service. There’s not much to this window – it’s basically a web browser, albeit without the address bar and other things you don’t need in order to play music.

Open your service of choice and you’ll be taken to it. Google Music, for example, just looks like Google Music in its own window:

Grooveshark looks like Grooveshark.

You get the idea – the web apps are run in their own pseudo-browser. But if you close the window, the music will keep on playing. This mimics the behavior of other Linux music players, such as Rhythmbox or Banshee. Where did the program go? Well, Ubuntu users can see it if they click the volume button:

It’s still running, and you can control it from here by clicking the Previous/Pause/Next buttons. You can bring back the window by simply clicking the song information.

Further System Integration

This isn’t just for Ubuntu users, though. Nuvola Player integrates into the many incarnations of the Linux desktop quite nicely. Here are just a few ways Nuvola builds web-based music players into your system:

It uses system notifications to show you information and album art every time a new song plays.

It can be controlled from your dock in Unity, as well as Docky, Avant Window Navigator and DockBarX.

Conclusion

Back in November I showed you how to integrate Google Music into Ubuntu using a program called Google Music Player. Nuvola evolved from that project, and I think it’s better off for supporting more players. Of course, more would be even better. What about Pandora or LastFM? Here’s hoping Nuvola grows to support every online music service out there.

Can you think of web music players you’d like to see added? Let me know in the comments below, along with your thoughts about Nuvola Player. I’ll be there to hang out.